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Also: Because Brain Pickings is in its twelfth year and because I write primarily about ideas of a timeless character, I have decided to plunge into my vast archive every Wednesday and choose from the thousands of essays one worth resurfacing and resavoring. Subscribe to this free midweek pick-me-up for heart, mind, and spirit below — it is separate from the standard Sunday digest of new pieces:

Wonderstruck: Remarkable New Work from Brian Selznick

What a 50-year fold in the spacetime continuum of New York has to do with three pounds of love and Scorsese.

By Maria Popova

You might recall author and illustrator extraordinaire Brian Selznick from his magnificent The Adventures of Hugo Cabret, a masterpiece of a children’s book inspired by Georges Méliès, the first “cinemagician,” and currently being made into a film by Martin Scorsese.

Today, Selznick is back with his much-anticipated Wonderstruck, which tells the parallel stories of Ben and Rose, two children trying to find their place of belonging in the world. One story takes place is 1977 and is told in text, the other in 1927 and is told in pictures. The two narratives weave back and forth, in Selznick’s signature style of intricate and ephemeral pencil sketches, to converge into a single story in the end.

But this is no ordinary 12-page children’s book — like Selznick’s previous tome, the mesmerizing 600-page volume weighs in at nearly three pounds and features hundreds of his original illustrations, whose intricate details exude incredible thoughtfulness and truthfulness to the era, bound to leave any adult, indeed, wonderstruck.

I really love working with a great amount of detail, I love doing research, I love making sure that every inch of the drawing has a reason to exist. It’s a very immersive experience to be inside the time period, having done all this research.” ~ Brian Selznick

And as book trailer fetishists, we have to give props to publisher Scholastic for the true feat of 2D/3D animation and analog/digital storytelling in the book’s beautiful trailer:

Selznick seems to share the Brain Pickings ethos of endless curiosity, discovery and learning through the research and creative process:

I write about things I love. In Wonderstruck, I write about museums, and I write about deaf culture, and I write about New York in 1927 and 1977. I did as much research as I possibly could on all of those things, and I learned so much, and I loved so much of what it was I discovered, and so what I hope for the reader is when they read this book, when they open this book up and see the pictures and read the stories and watch how they come together, that the love that I felt for all of these different elements and these different characters comes through for them.” ~ Brian Selznick

Absolutely beautiful and full of fascinating detail, Wonderstruck is a living testament to all that makes books — and their creators — so very special, and a true artifact of human creativity and curiosity.

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Each week of the past eleven years, I have poured tremendous time, thought, love, and resources into Brain Pickings, which remains free (and ad-free) and is made possible by patronage. If you find any joy and stimulation here, please consider supporting my labor of love by becoming a Sustaining Patron with a recurring monthly donation, between a cup of tea and a Brooklyn lunch. And if you already donate, from the bottom of my heart: THANK YOU.

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Sunday newsletter

Brain Pickings has a free Sunday digest of the week's most interesting and inspiring articles across art, science, philosophy, creativity, children's books, and other strands of our search for truth, beauty, and meaning. Here's an example. Like? Claim yours:

midweek newsletter

Also: Because Brain Pickings is in its twelfth year and because I write primarily about ideas of a timeless character, I have decided to plunge into my vast archive every Wednesday and choose from the thousands of essays one worth resurfacing and resavoring. Subscribe to this free midweek pick-me-up for heart, mind, and spirit below — it is separate from the standard Sunday digest of new pieces:

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